


I've Seen This Face Before

by entanglednow



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fluff, Idiots in Love, Insecurity, M/M, Morning After, Romance, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Suggestive Themes, adventurous Aziraphale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24181732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: In which there is a morning after for both of them, and a few long-held insecurities are discussed.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 103
Kudos: 681
Collections: Snakey Bits!Crowley





	I've Seen This Face Before

Everything has changed.

When Aziraphale wakes up in his own bed, and is for the very first time not alone in it, it's beyond anything he could have imagined. He'd always known that love could be overwhelming, but a love that was returned and celebrated and _indulged_ , nothing could have prepared him for that.

Crowley.

It had always been Crowley. Even in the long years when the very idea of it had seemed impossible, unthinkable, scandalous in every way imaginable. Aziraphale had known that there could never be anything between them, he'd known and that had made it easier somehow - and then so very much harder. Crowley, who had turned every idea Aziraphale had of what a demon was supposed to be upside down and inside out. Who had proved himself imaginative, and loyal, and playful, and kind, over and over again. Someone could search a whole universe and never find a single being remotely like him, and yet, for some reason, he had left his heart at Aziraphale's feet.

He'd done nothing to deserve it, and he'd been too afraid to reach for it. But there it stayed, for years, for centuries, for _millennia_.

After Armageddon failed to happen, after they were set loose from their respective offices. Aziraphale had imagined, he'd expected, he'd _hoped_. But they'd simply continued to carefully orbit each other, an achingly familiar distance apart, neither pulling away nor drawing any closer, and Aziraphale didn't know how to change that, how to take that first step. Surely, he'd thought, after all this time it was his turn to take the first step? But part of him, a rather large part of him, was still afraid, still anxious, still watchful. He still expected someone to punish them if he dared to even consider it. It had been forbidden to them for such a long time. Being afraid had become a habit, a groove worn too deep.

Until, one long evening, in the warmth of the bookshop's backroom, Crowley had smiled that beautiful, crooked smile at something he'd said, eyes a warm, yellow-gold. Aziraphale had loved him so deeply in that moment that he almost couldn't bear it. And he'd realised, all at once, that he was _allowed_ to now, that no one would stop him. No one was watching him any more, no one cared what he did.

They were both completely and absolutely free.

He'd spilled his glass of wine, shockingly clumsy of him, but it had been as if something that had been keeping him upright for his whole existence had been abruptly whisked away, and he suddenly realised that he was perfectly fine without it. Perfectly capable of standing on his own - that it had, in fact, kept him in an unacceptably rigid shape for a very, very long time.

Crowley had surged to his feet, asked him if he was alright, and Aziraphale had managed to shake his head. Because it had been quite impossible to be alright under that sudden realisation. Crowley had asked him what he needed. He'd told Aziraphale that whatever it was, Crowley would get it for him, he would give it to him.

_Whatever it was._

And, of course, there was only one thing.

Aziraphale couldn't help it, couldn't stop it, he'd said _'you'_. Without a pause to think about how shockingly demanding and selfish that might sound. He'd tangled his awkward, human hands in Crowley's jacket and said it again, over and over. Until Crowley had kissed him, kissed him like he'd wanted to do it forever. Aziraphale had never felt quite so much like a lit fuse, and he'd been positively impolite about dragging the demon upstairs, to his rarely-used bedroom, and pressing him down onto the bed. Until there had been barely any space left between their corporations, and only a layer of intent between their immaterial forms. Aziraphale can almost still feel the way their flaring edges had dragged together at the end, ethereal and occult in a shower of metaphysical sparks, it had felt like being filled with twisting streams of light. 

Some people have said that the wanting is better than the having, a suggestion that the desire for something, often constant and overwhelming, can never be eclipsed or satisfied by actually attaining it. Aziraphale had been afraid, when he was brave enough to dwell on it, that there was truth to the idiom. After all, they'd both spent years wanting, desiring, unable to actually have each other. But the reality of it now, of being free to finally touch Crowley, to kiss him, to eat with him every night, to smell his brimstone-spice scent in every room, to call him _lovely_ if he wanted to. Aziraphale has gone through every language he knows to try and explain it, to try and describe it, and every one has come up wanting. Perhaps the words don't exist, perhaps they haven't been invented yet.

He carefully rolls in the sheets, and then blinks surprised eyes at what he finds next to him.

"Oh."

Crowley is a collection of heavy, looping coils and shining black scales, completely filling the other side of the bed, and the plump shape of the pillow. The arrow of his head resting atop a wide curve of his body, which winds and twists in upon itself, revealing long stretches of his bright red underbelly. The demon is a humming wave of contentment, of relaxation and pleasure, and Aziraphale gives a shuddering sigh, because Crowley is so utterly, devastatingly beautiful like this. It's been such a long time since he'd seen this part of him. Not since the first time they met, when he'd flowed effortlessly up the wall and introduced himself.

But they've been through so much since then, so many years of friendship, and affection, and denial, and to have Crowley share this intimate part of himself now makes something inside Aziraphale ache. He is so desperately in love, and the simple fact that he can feel it now, without shame, or fear, that he can speak it aloud and have it returned. Aziraphale wants to reach out and touch him, to feel him like this, for the first time, but he's uncertain if he should. Even after all the intimacies they'd shared last night, the many human touches and sensations that he'd found uniquely pleasurable when shared between ethereal and occult beings of considerable power. He doesn't want to reach out while Crowley is sleeping, not while he's in this much older, earlier form. It seems like overstepping somehow. 

But he's so very lovely, there's no harm, surely, in watching him like this for a while.

Only, the demon's gentle shifting turns abruptly to stillness, and those slitted, yellow pupils suddenly fix on him. Crowley gives a quick, panicked thrash, a jolt that shakes the mattress and flings half the pillows to the floor. There's a sharp twist of power, a folding of form, and Crowley is abruptly in his human body again, an awkward, naked stretch of skin and bone beside Aziraphale in the bed, hurriedly pushing himself upright. His abrupt waking, and possibly also the speed of the change, leaves him unsteadily balanced on one hand, body still trying to contract, like it has three times the number of muscles.

"Crowley." Aziraphale can't help but be startled by the flurry of movement, reaching out and finding the warm bend of a knee.

"Fuck, I'm sssorry, that doesn't -" His voice is a raspy hiss and he bites into it. "That doesn't normally happen when I'm sleeping." Crowley's human fingers tangle in the sheets, pulling them closer, as if he's thinking of dragging them over himself. Mouth twisted at the edge, like he's done something shameful. 

"I don't usually sleep at all," Aziraphale reminds him. "Considering this is the first time we've ever slept together, I think allowances can be made." He lets himself smile at the thought, lets it widen when Crowley faces him fully, takes in the sight of Aziraphale curled in the sheets next to him with a look of such stunned affection. "Good morning."

Crowley's brief, and completely unintelligible, noise of reply breaks for a soft, breathy laugh. He looks distractingly rumpled like this, a tangle of bare limbs and untidy hair, the white sheet draped carelessly about him. Aziraphale thinks he could become attached to it very easily. The idea that he might have permission to slide across the bed and lay his hands on a Crowley that looks like this, it steals all the air from his chest. 

"I would very much like to kiss you again," Aziraphale decides, rather than keep it to himself. 

Crowley's expression is such a perfect mix of adoration and barely contained desire - and being able to see it so clearly, the naked truth of it, no longer hidden behind glasses, or suggestion, or gifts, or acts of quiet devotion - it's so new and so terrifying, and Aziraphale never wants it to end. 

"Angel, you don't have to ask," Crowley tells him. It's not the first time he's voiced the same sentiment, but the words still make him breathless, and maybe that's why Aziraphale keeps asking, to watch that flush of pleasure, to see that stunned, helpless look that says Crowley is still finding this just as overwhelming as Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale catches his wrist, enjoys the solid, living warmth of it beneath his fingers, before he pulls gently. He doesn't stop until he has Crowley's slanted mouth against his own, tastes his sharp teeth and the curl of his tongue, threads fingers in that beautiful, tantalising hair. They don't, it has to be said, have to stop kissing if they don't want to. They don't need to breathe. But everything is so very new, and Aziraphale thinks he would dearly like to take his new lover to breakfast. And isn't that a beautiful sentence to be able to think? Can the love of your life still be your lover, or is that just for things that are new and purely physical? He often loses track as the meanings change, but it does sound so thrilling. Aziraphale has never had a lover before. He'd like to call Crowley that, and so many other words, if only in his own head.

Crowley lets him pull away, with only the faintest murmur of disappointment, and though Aziraphale is grateful that Crowley is letting him set the pace of this, he's also looking forward to his demon feeling confident enough to make demands of him. He thinks he would enjoy that immensely.

"M'sorry about before," Crowley says, the previous softness of his expression drawing back into a deep frown. "You shouldn't have had to wake up to me like that. It won't happen again." There's a surprising tension to the words, perfectly matched to Aziraphale's disappointment. Crowley seems to see it so differently to him, as if he honestly expects Aziraphale to be put off by his snake form, expects him to find it incompatible somehow with this new and exciting thing they've tentatively started.

"Like that -" Aziraphale can't help the faintly exasperated noise. "Crowley, I hope you don't think I am in any way averse to you being in your snake form."

Crowley frowns, as if he had, in fact, had that impression. And the thought of Aziraphale ever making him feel that way, even by accident, is deeply painful.

"Well, I mean." There's an awkward shrugging motion. "There's nothing like a reminder after your first time together that the person you're sleeping with is a demon, is there?" It's said with a careless sort of amusement, but Aziraphale knows perfectly well that it's a vulnerable place Crowley hadn't meant to expose.

Aziraphale blinks very slowly, and he can't help the gentle edge of a smile. 

"Do you believe that it might somehow have slipped my mind?" he asks, as if he could forget, as if he could ever forget a single thing about him. Well-loved idiot that he is. "I'm aware I can often be forgetful, but that seems a bit much even for me. Crowley, darling, I woke from the most astonishing experience of my life to find you still beside me. A beautiful, glossy spill of scales and contentment. How is there anything in that I could possibly object to?"

"Astonishing?" Crowley manages, like that's the part he's stuck on, mouth quirked at the edge. Though there's a softness there too, a softness that asks questions. As if it hadn't been perfectly obvious how much they'd pleased each other. At how they'd fallen asleep in an exhausted tangle. A habit Aziraphale had never had much interest in before. A habit he would quite like to explore further.

"I was admiring you, if you must know," he says honestly. "Before you woke. It's the first form I ever saw you in, and it was barely a glimpse before you showed me this face. I'd almost forgotten how lovely you were. How fluidly you moved. I wanted to touch you." 

"Aziraphale -" There's a wealth of protests behind his name, excuses and explanations queuing on his tongue, as if Crowley thinks he's somehow appeasing him. 

"Hush," Aziraphale tells him. "I know exactly who and what you are, and I love you."

He watches the words hit Crowley like a blow, still, but there's something so wonderfully reckless about the sound of it, he's not sure he can stop.

"It's one thing to _know_ it's another thing to wake up with it in your bed," Crowley says quietly, but it's hesitant, as if he desperately wants Aziraphale to tell him otherwise.

It's all so unnecessary, because Aziraphale has loved Crowley in all his many faces and forms, for a very long time. 

"Crowley, I have no objection to sharing a bed with you, in whatever form you choose to take. You're always beautiful to me."

Crowley raises an eyebrow at that, in a way that's more than a little suggestive, daring him to expand that thought further. It's a distraction, and they both know it.

"No objection," Aziraphale repeats firmly, because he will not let Crowley distract him away from this conversation, even though it's clearly pressing somewhere well-hidden and vulnerable, no matter how skilled his demon is at exactly that. "Crowley, when I said I loved you I meant every part of you, every single piece, without question or reserve."

"Angel, some of those pieces are pretty broken." Crowley offers that with sharp honesty, like a warning this time, rather than a deflection.

Aziraphale gives him a pointed look.

"Well, some of mine are rigid and obstinate, prone to lagging behind the times and fussing unbearably," he says firmly, as if daring Crowley to disagree. When they both know that it's the truth.

Crowley looks for a moment as if he's going to protest that it's not the same, or to reassure Aziraphale that it doesn't matter. But eventually he relaxes on the other side of the bed, and gives him an unbearably fond look, before leaning close enough to slide their mouths together again. Crowley kisses him for a long, distracting moment, at first closed and easy, and then open and more complicated, in a way Aziraphale hasn't seen fit to practice for more than a hundred years, but is getting a rather enthusiastic refresher course in.

"And, I confess, I would rather like to see us intertwined like that," he murmurs against the line of Crowley's jaw, feeling suddenly and unexpectedly bold.

There's a hissing intake of breath. 

"Aziraphale, stop," Crowley chokes out.

"Would you like that?" Aziraphale asks. He thinks he would find that a wonderful experience for the both of them.

"Don't ask me things like that." It's a plea, but soft and hesitant, as if there's so much more underneath.

"Have you thought about it?" Aziraphale presses, and finds himself genuinely curious, and more than a little intrigued as to the answer.

Crowley exhales, as if weighing the risk of being honest, the risk of scandalising the angel, with whether he's willing to lie to him.

"Of course I have," he says at last, though there's a strained, guilty texture to the words. "You think I haven't thought about you in every way. In every way it's possible to -" He stops, as if he'd shared more than he meant to. "Fuck, I don't want to ask too much from you."

Aziraphale is perhaps to blame for more than a few of Crowley's insecurities. It wasn't that he went too slowly, but that he made no forward progress at all, he let Crowley hope for both of them, stubborn, fearful thing that he was. Aziraphale slides a touch closer and takes the opportunity to curl an arm around the demon's waist, feels the slow, swaying readjustment of weight as Crowley leans into him.

"Letting me know what you want will never be wrong," Aziraphale tells him. "And I think you'll find that once I get up to speed, there's very little I would deny you."


End file.
